But I did know that I was still on my back, and Cimarron had fallen sprawling, then slowly pressed the huge arms beneath him and raised his body up off the floor. I knew I had to get up. Get up somehow. But I was tired. I was pooped. I was, in truth, horribly and just about definitively exhausted.
At least Cimarron wasn't leaping lightly to his feet, either. He was still on the floor, on hands and knees, his head hanging down almost loosely from the thick neck. I made myself move, turn, get my hands against the doorframe and pull, getting my feet under me, pushing with trembling muscles of calf and thigh, getting up, getting there. Nothing very speedy about it, and nothing in the least graceful, or dynamic, or efficient. Just slow and sure, functional, a combined pulling and grunting and scrambling that got the job done.
When I was erect, swaying, seeing the whole room and everything in it swimming in ripples and crazy undulations, Cimarron wasn't up off his hands and knees, not quite yet. He turned the big head, bent his neck and looked up, still a picture of fury, hate, murderous intent, a lot of ugly things, which impressed me, again, as a splendid target.
I did it pretty well for a guy about to fall down. I managed not to keel over entirely, planted my left foot solidly, swung my right leg forward, and the toe of my heavy cordovan shoe caught him just at one side of his nose.
I think it overbalanced him more than it stunned him, but the result was that he sprawled flat on the floor. Flat, but still moving, hands clawing, arms pressing down, lifting his bulk maybe an inch. This time I kicked him in the side of the head. It was, in some ways, an easier target, and there was more room, more space somehow. Anyway, I got him good with that kick. Plus the next one or two. I'm not sure how many. All I know is that I jarred him solidly, severely, until the sonofabitch didn't move anymore.
I stood there, muscles quivering, feeling as if I weighed a thousand pounds. I wanted to lie down, sleep, become unconscious. Anything except move. But there was something else I had to do. I wasn't finished. Not yet. Not quite yet.
I walked—staggered, reeled, whatever—walked the length of the room. I knew what I wanted was down there. I couldn't quite remember yet what it was. But it was there. And I was going to get it. I was really going to get it—just as soon as I pinned down what the hell it was.
As I neared the desk, people were around me. Voices. People talking to me. A woman talking. “Shell!” I couldn't see her yet, but I knew it was ... zap ... I knew it was the same woman whose voice I'd heard before. I recognized her conversation.
But it bothered me. I was certain I must know who she was, know her name. Of course I did. I'd known it when I came in here. Just couldn't quite wrap my head around it now. There was a feeling that I knew her well, and had done something terrible, something shameful, and it had much to do with her. It had everything to do with her. I stopped thinking about it. I didn't want to think about it.
A man's voice, “I don't believe it, I still don't believe it.” That was Romanelle. Good old Claude.
And there was a brief sight and sound of Worthington X. Bent—no, Bentley. Bentley X. Worthington, looking at my presumably battered face, shaking his head, and saying, “Damnedest, most unbelievable exhibition of ... of ... exhibition I ever saw in my life. That was awesome! Grotesque! It was crazy!"
“Thanks, Bent,” I said.
Then the woman was near, close, the perfumed softness other at my side, fingers touching my face. She was saying, “Oh, Shell, you're hurt. Oh ... you're hurt."
“Nah,” I said. “It only looks that way.” I moved my head around, trying to locate her. “Just a minute,” I said. “I'll find you."
“Shell, darling, you need a doctor. You need a doctor right away!"
That did it. That made me remember, suddenly, what it was I had to do. The last of it. In some ways, maybe, the best of it.
“Thanks, lady,” I said, smiling what must have been a most unlovely smile. “That's what I need, all right. And I know the one I want. Now that I've learned how to pronounce his name."
I went looking for him. Didn't have to go very far. He was still where I'd seen him scuttling after diving to the floor, when I'd first come inside. He was behind a large chair covered in shimmering gold cloth, flat on the carpet, hands wrapped over his head.
“Hello there, Dr. Bliss,” I said gently. Then I kicked him. Not the way I'd kicked Cimarron. Just a nudge. But not exactly a nudge that could be easily ignored. He looked up at me, eyes wide, frightened.
“Get up, you useless sonofabitch,” I said softly. “Get up, and do it now, or I'll pull your guts out right there on the floor."
He got up. Slowly, but he made it all the way. He looked at me as if he thought I was a crazy man about to cook him and eat him alive. The good doctor, who liked to play with electricity, moved away from me until his back was against the wall, arms out at his sides, hands pressed against the wood.
“Bliss,” I said, stepping in front of him, “I am going to hit you. I am going to slam you as hard as I can. So don't just stand there. Take a swing at me, do something."
He didn't speak. His knees were visibly shaking. I didn't feel any sympathy for him, none at all. I could still see his fingers turning that little black dial, moving those paddles toward my head.
“Last chance,” I said. “Hell, I'm out on my feet, Doc. Feel like I've died and been resurrected twice in the last half hour. Who knows, I may faint if you land a good one on me. Maybe you'll get lucky. No?"
He remained silent. Just stood there shaking.
So I hit him.
I don't know how, with all the aches and creaks and pains and sprains and rips and such in all of my three thousand and ninety-six muscles, I managed to swing so freely and hit him so hard. But I did. I got him solidly in the mouth—the mouth that had said, “I'll handle it” and “Here we go again, boys” as his friendly-family-physician's fingers twirled that little dial—and I almost enjoyed the excruciating catastrophe that shot from my fist through arm to possibly dislocated shoulder, because my ears rejoiced at the meaty SPLAT of the blow landing, and my knuckles felt Dr. Bliss's lips split and splash, felt teeth grittily breaking.
He slammed back against the wall, his head smacking the paneled wood and bouncing forward again. Just in time. It was beautiful. Because, although he was going down he was going down slowly, sliding, slipping slowly down the dark-wood-paneled wall, and as his head bounced forward it carried his face with it, and his face carried that red-smeared torn-flesh-and-streaming-red-blood orifice he had so jovially employed for his we're-through-with-him-aren't-we? pleasantries, and that already unrecognizable mouth-mess was still not much below the level of my shoulders, bouncing toward me and descending slowly enough that I had time to hit him again.
So that is what I did. I hit him again. In the mouth.
And that appeared to take care of everything of pressing immediacy. I was suddenly without purpose, without a goal. There wasn't anything left for me to do. But as I turned wobbling, staggered to my left, a man put his hand on my arm. It was Romanelle. Claude. The one other man who'd been through what I'd gone through.
He said, “You don't know how Cimarron found Spree, do you?"
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I don't remember, but I can guess—"
“Mr. Scott—Shell. Alda bragged about it to me. I already knew he had Toker's phone tapped. Calls were routed to a voice-actuated transmitter three hundred yards away, in an empty house. Once a day, Andy Foster—before he took off—picked up the tape, took it to Alda. Today, Andy wasn't around to do it. There was a lot of delay. When Alda did finally get the tape, he separately recorded that confession you made. When you phoned Steve Whistler. Remember?"
“Yeah, but ... I'm starting to..."
“He gave that recording to a policeman friend. And then—it took a while—then, when he thought of checking it more carefully, and took the time, he listened closely to the recording of the call you made from Toker's home to Spree. To Spree at the Registry."
“Jesus,” I said.
“When they figured out what the number you'd called was, and identified the location, they just went there—"
“My God,” I said, interrupting him, not hearing if he said anything else, my head full, spinning. “I didn't tell them,” I said. “I really didn't, I didn't tell them."
Suddenly I felt light as air. I could feel the helium gurgling in my veins. Probably, I thought, I could float if I just strained and grunted hard enough. I looked for her, knew she was around here somewhere, creaked my head around with a sound inside my head like criiickk ... and my eyes fell on one of the loveliest sights I'd seen in all of the universes I'd visited not long ago.
For a moment I wasn't completely sure ... ah, then—"Spree?” I said. “Spree, my love. I thought...” zap, gurgle “...I'd lost you, far, far in the dranglows."
She smiled. Full lips curving, soft and sweet as velvet nightsong, warm as longing, lovely as sin. I smiled at her smile, her lips, the white teeth with that slightly too short one there, the great green eyes bright with moonglow and softer than secret whispers, the hair like fairygold spun of honey, and I remembered for sure where I had seen that face before.
Out there, it was, in that far-far place where I'd been, that immensity filled with shouting stars and shining suns and the powers and pleasures of God, and of us.
I held out my arms, reached for and enfolded her, pulled her close, hugged my Spree. “Hey,” I said, with my lips against her ear, “I remember you. I really do. I do.” And she said, “Me, too,” muffled. “Me, too."
But then she was rising, slipping upward. I shook my head back and forth, cri-ick criiick, wondering if this was another of those short circuits or zaps or glitches. No, not this time. She really was up there, way up there, maybe nine, nine and a half feet tall. I looked up at her. She was looking down at me. So I looked down at me, why not? At least, I looked down at my feet. I didn't have any.
That was a crock. How did I get here and do all this if I didn't have any feet? Sure enough, though, all I had was a couple of little short fat legs ending in stumps; no feet at all. “How about that?” I said, to nobody in particular. “Those dirrty bastards."
I recalled all those doctors and Igors clamping machineries on my head and screwing everything on sideways. They'd done it. I remembered some of the other stuff, but I sure hadn't noticed them doing anything like this.
“Oh, God ... Shell—Shell!"
That was Sprue, way up above me there, far-far. “Those dirrty bastards,” I repeated. “You know what they did? They shrank me."
“Oh, Shell ... oh, please."
She was tugging at me, yanking on my coat sleeves or coat shoulders. “Get up off your knees,” she said in a strangely tortured voice. “Please, please."
“Please? Knees?” I said. “Don't be ridic ... well. Boy. Oh, boy. You want to see a relieved ghee, Spry? You want to see a guy who'll never take feet for grunted again as ling as he loves? Langs? Forever?” She was tugging, and the guy, the one with a face like a large imp or reformed devil—Romanoff, Rubadub, something—was tugging also, lifting.
“Hey, thanks,” I said.
I was on my feet. Feet felt great. “Way to go!” I said.
Right in front of me again was—Spree. Had to keep track of that name, Sp and a ree. Her gorgeous face was sort of—lopsided. Twisted. And wet. Wet?
“Hey, what are you crying for?” I asked her. “Nothing to cry about now. If you want to know the truth, which I picked up in my extensive travels, there's never anything to cry about, not really. Not if you'll laugh instead. OK? OK, Spree? Spree?"
“Oh, Shell, damn you—damn you—damn you, Shell. Are you all right? Are you going to ... live?"
“What kind of dumb question is that? Can't you tell? Of course I'm—"
“But I saw you get hit. By a bullet. Right after you came in. It spun you around, almost knocked you down."
“No. Must've been in a movie I saw. I have no recollection—"
“And you just swung your arm around and went bang, and—"
“Did I have a gun in my arm? Or did I just go bang?"
“Yes, you had a gun. That's what—oh..."
“I was going to say, if I didn't, that's a pretty good trick, or else pret-ty stupid—"
“And you're still bleeding all over the place."
“No. Why would you say something like that?"
“You are. Look. Look, you damn—damn—damn—"
“Don't get lippy with me, kid. OK, I'll look, just to satisfy the dumb ... Nguuugh."
After a while I said weakly, “That can't all be from me. I didn't have that much to start with. How many guys got killed in here?"
But there wasn't time for an answer.
Whole bunch of cops. Uniforms, plainclothes, big cops, little cops, nice cops, mean cops—mostly mean—more cops than anybody could possibly desire unless some of them were coroners.
Soon one of them was next to me, tugging at my elbow and saying in a starchy British accent, “Come along quietly now, old man."
That was three times in only ... whenever ... that somebody had called me an old man. Wasn't I still thirty? Probably not. I was trying to figure out where all the cops had come from, and why. A mean one who'd just handcuffed me and read me a lot of my rights said the paramedics and ambulances would be here practically instantly to resuscitate me, or something to that effect, but then just kept going on and on about my having killed a man named Fred Keats, and killed this one and that one, and hitting several other victims with clubs or guns or bathtubs, I don't remember, and stealing a bunch of cars and guns and people, and operating without a license, and now this thing here, this thing being two or three more dead guys—well, just one of them, Cowbody was dead, the others were only invalids—and unconscious, clearly ruined, barely breathing, respected Alda Cimarron, the president of Golden Phoenix Mines and other financial and charitable institutions, who had been brutally hit and kneed and kicked and presumably pitched into a bunker with an eight iron, and —
I interrupted him. “No problem."
“What? No what?"
“Problem,” I said. “Piece of cake."
“Piece of what? What?"
“I find it difficult to understand you, Officer,” I said, “when you stammer. I am trying to explain that ... I can explain all of that."
“All of—what?"
“I wish you wouldn't do that, sir. I am trying to tell you that I can explain ... everything."
He stood in front of me, smiling. It was an odd smile. Much like the mask of Comedy with thirty-six unfilled cavities in it. Knots of muscle bunched, wiggled, in his jaws, in his cheeks, in his eyes.
He smiled and smiled. “That'll be fun,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Spree said, “and then what?"
We were no longer in Arizona. We were together in my apartment. In the Spartan Apartment Hotel, Hollywood, California. Back at the place I call home: the tropical fish—which Jimmy, the night man, had taken care of for me while I was away—my bawdy nude, Amelia, the chocolate-brown divan and hassocks and other familiar things. Home. Roots. The place that keeps you anchored to earth when you roam for a while.
So Arizona was behind us; but we had a lot of memories about those days, and nights, some good and some not so good, there in the desert—and we'd been talking about all that, among other things, for hours now.
I said, “And then I hired a Phoenix private detective to locate all the people whose cars I'd ... borrowed, including Andy Foster, and make sure they were compensated, satisfied, mollified—at least none of them sued me. Plus, he found the guy who sold me the hat and golf club, paid him the three hundred. Unfortunately, he had to go to Michigan to find him. Also, when he gave the man back his eight iron the guy said, Thanks, but he'd given up golf."
“Oh, dear. Because of you, Shell?"
“Oh ... I think not. Golfers do that all the time."
This morning was the first I'd se
en of Spree since her last visit to me at the hospital in Phoenix nearly three weeks ago, and it was almost evening now, dusk softening the city outside. Three weeks; but this morning, when I opened the door and saw her standing there, saw that wonderful face, there was the same magic in that moment as there'd been the first time, more than a month before.
Most of that month had been, for me, recuperation, getting back the old vigor and vitality and then some, more zip and less zap, taking lots of powdered vitamin C and little pilules and drops and marvelous glandular and nutritional goodies in unreadable boxes from West Germany and Switzerland and Tijuana, goodies so marvelously virtuous and beneficial for the outer and inner man that it is unlawful to sell them in the US of A. As a result, I had truly never felt better in my life.
Most of my present exuberance and yeastiness was due to the unorthodox ministrations of Dr. Barry Midland. I spent two weeks under his care in a private hospital—not the Medigenic—and I wouldn't let anyone else even take my temperature or prescribe an aspirin. This, needless to say, caused considerable commotion, voluble hueing and crying, virtually a battle-to-the-death upheaval in sacred hospital routine, and thus brought down upon me vast imprecations, condemnations, even questionings of sanity, issuing starchily from numerous doctors, nurses, residents, trainees, and even the guy who cleaned out the toilets, all of whom insisted that they were in charge of my life, not I. Or attempted to so insist. Having survived what I had so recently emerged half alive from, it was a piece of cake, no problem, to convince them they were full of it. I won.
My selfish obstinacy and refusal to accept “accepted” medical treatment, added to my natural soon-fed-up-with-it obnoxiousness, also caused Dr. Midland himself some hassle and difficulty. But he assured me that he didn't mind; he was used to it. Besides, he was thinking of establishing a clinic in Tijuana, where he might effectively heal the ailing without going to jail for it.
Ah, yes, jail. I was there for a while, too. Actually, only overnight. The shortness of my stay was mainly because of Bentley X. Worthington, who threw several legal books at police officialdom, threatened numerous private and public bodies with everything except impeachment of the king, and impressed all and sundry with his fearsomeness. We do need friends along the way, caring and capable friends, no doubt about it. Of course, the only people I'd shot or physically devastated one way or another were practicing felons, one of whom was a practicing physician, none of whom were practicing anything anymore. All of which made Worthington's job somewhat less impossible. Interestingly, the taped “confession” I phoned in to Steve Whistler turned out to be one of the most valuable tools Worthington used to pry me out of the can.
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 35